Introduction to Evidence-Based Practice

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the foundation of clinical decisions made by health care professionals and a foundational area of practice and knowledge for health sciences librarians. If you teach, search, or provide reference services in the fields of medicine, nursing, or allied health, you’ll want a solid grounding in this essential area.

Sarah Cantrell and Steph Hendren, experienced EBP instructors, will introduce you to the principles and processes of EBP. You’ll learn the steps of the EBP process and the basic principles of critically appraising clinical medicine studies. You’ll be able to identify core study designs used in clinical medicine, apply a standard framework to develop focused clinical questions, and identify resources to answer background and foreground questions for researchers and other library patrons.

You will leave with a deeper understanding of the evidence-based practice process, new EBP skills, and ready to continue your EBP learning with deep-dive learning on EBP searching and critical appraisal.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Define evidence-based practice (EBP)
• Describe the steps of the EBP process
• Differentiate between the two major types of clinical questions, background and foreground
• Utilize the PICO framework to develop clinical foreground questions
• Identify common types of study designs and their strengths and limitations
• Explain the overarching principles of EBP searching and study appraisal

Audience

Medical librarians, clinical librarians, and other health information professionals who need an introduction to the principles and processes of evidence-based practice (EBP).

Presenters

Sarah Cantrell, MLIS, AHIP is the Associate Director for Research & Education at the Duke University Medical Center Library & Archives, liaison to the Graduate Medical Education programs at Duke Health, co-director for Duke’s national Evidence-Based Practice workshop for clinicians and librarians, and adjunct faculty at the UNC−Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, where she co-teaches the “Evidence-Based Practice and the Medical Librarian” online course with Megan von Isenburg, MSLS, AHIP. She teaches courses on evidence-based practice across the health sciences curricula and graduate medical education at Duke. Along with von Isenburg and librarians at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Sarah is a creator of the Evidence-Based Practice online tutorial series, an open educational resource of modular asynchronous tutorials. She is a past facilitator in the Critical Appraisal Institute for Librarians as well as a past teaching fellow in the Supporting Clinical Care: An Institute in Evidence-Based Practice for Medical Librarians. Prior to her position at Duke, Sarah established the clinical librarian service at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, co-directed the EBM curriculum for the Internal Medicine Residency Program, and joined teaching rounds with Medicine and the Intensive Care Unit.

Steph Hendren, MLIS, AHIP, is a Research and Education Librarian at Duke University Medical Center Library & Archives. She is the liaison to the Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy programs and is involved in several classes related to evidence-based practice across the health sciences curricula at Duke. She is also a librarian tutor for Duke’s national Evidence-Based Practice workshop for clinicians and librarians. Prior to her position at Duke, Steph was a Clinical Information Librarian at Augusta University, where she attended rounds with the hospital’s Pediatric and Family Medicine departments to deliver clinical information in real time.

MLA CE: 1.5